Page 226 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Theoretical Considerations
theories suggest that citizens behave as if they do not seek information
chiefly in order to reduce uncertainty, but in order to bolster their prior
beliefs. 32
The third tenet of the psychological tradition is that the processes by
which information in the political environment is translated into knowledge
and eventually political engagement are highly contingent. In particular,
these processes are contingent upon social context and the nature of the
stimulus. Research on political learning, for instance, shows that the ways
individuals assimilate information and convert it into knowledge can be
contingent upon the approval or disapproval of those around them. 33
In this way, social structure interacts with information, so that two in-
dividuals with identical beliefs and values who are exposed to the same
political information may assimilate different knowledge and may con-
sequently act in different ways, depending on their social environment.
The fact that political knowledge tends to be episodic and stratified also
supports the tenet that what is learned from information is contingent.
The strategies of elites and the contingencies of political events affect the
salience of issues, direct public attention toward one body of information
and away from another, and also affect which citizens acquire what in-
formation. Constructivist approaches to political knowledge go several
steps further, claiming that political knowledge is not so much carried
around in the mind of the individual as a function of past experience
and exposure to information as it is constructed “on the spot,” when an
individual is prompted or stimulated to provide a view or preference
about an issue. 34
These three tenets of the psychological approach lead to theoretically
superior expectations about political engagement in the contemporary
period. They imply that new information resources are likely to be used
mainly by the most well informed, who are already most likely to be
engaged. For this reason and because information is likely to reinforce
existing preferences and predispositions, it should exert little stimulus
effect on engagement. In the contemporary information revolution, the
informed citizen may indeed be more likely to engage in the practices of

32
Lodge, Taber, and Galonsky, “The Political Consequences of Motivated Reasoning”;
Charles G. Lord, Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper, “Biased Assimilation and Attitude
Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, no. 11 (1979): 2098–2109; Diana C.
Mutz and Paul S. Martin, “Facilitating Communication Across Lines of Political Dif-
ference,” American Political Science Review 95 (2001): 97–114.
33
Huckfeldt and Sprague, Citizens, Politics, and Social Communication.
34
Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Public Opinion.
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